Here’s a conversation that happens in mortgage brokers’ offices every single week.
A mum sits down, slides her payslips across the desk almost apologetically, and opens with some version of: “Look, we probably can’t do anything until I’m back at work full-time, but…”
And a decent chunk of the time, she’s wrong — in the best possible way.
If you’re home with the kids, on parental leave, doing casual school-hours shifts, running a little business from the kitchen table, or parenting solo on one income plus Family Tax Benefit, you’ve probably assumed the property market has a “come back later” sign on the door. The 20% deposit myth doesn’t help. Neither does the well-meaning aunty who insists banks “don’t count Centrelink.”
So instead of another list of savings tips telling us to skip the coffee (we know, we know), here’s what actually happens behind the scenes — with real, de-identified stories of families in exactly these situations who got there.
Yes, banks can count Family Tax Benefit. Really.
Let’s start with the one that surprises everyone: many lenders can include Family Tax Benefit Parts A and B as income when they work out what you can borrow.
It’s not unlimited. Most lenders who accept it want the kids under a certain age (commonly somewhere around 11–13, and it genuinely varies bank to bank), they’ll want to see the payments landing in your account or on your Centrelink statements, and some count all of it while others count a portion. But for a family where one parent is home with the kids, FTB can add real dollars to the income a bank assesses — sometimes the difference between “not yet” and “let’s go look at houses.”
The catch? Every lender treats it differently. One bank counts FTB for your 12-year-old, the next caps it at 11, a third turns its nose up entirely. Which brings us to the theme of this whole article: with family finances, the answer usually isn’t “no” — it’s “not with that lender.”
The maternity leave myth
This one deserves its own headline, because the fear is so common and the fix is so specific.
Banks don’t automatically decline you because you’re on parental leave. What they want is evidence of your return: a letter from your employer confirming your return date, your role, your hours and your salary when you’re back — plus enough savings to comfortably cover the gap months. Get that letter right and many lenders will assess you on your return-to-work income while you’re still home with a newborn on your chest.
Here’s the kicker though: most employers get the letter wrong the first time. We’ve seen applications stall not because mum wasn’t returning to work, but because HR wrote a lovely warm letter that forgot to state the return date. Or the hours. Or the salary. The bank bounced it, everyone panicked, and the fix was… a redraft.
If you’re pregnant or on leave and quietly browsing listings at 11pm: the paperwork strategy matters more than the timing. A vague letter isn’t a “no” — it’s a second draft. (There’s a full rundown of how getting a home loan on maternity leave actually works, including what the letter needs to say, if you want the detail.)
Starting a little business from home? Read this BEFORE you ditch the payslip
This is the one for every mum with a side hustle, an ABN, or a home business dream — and it’s the trap almost nobody warns you about.
The moment you swap a payslip for your own ABN, most banks reset the clock on your income. They’ll generally want one to two years of tax returns under the new business before they’ll count what you earn — even if you’re doing the same work, for the same clients, at the same kitchen table.
True story from our files: a physiotherapist went from employee to contractor — same industry, same skills, a contract locked in for years ahead. The banks’ response? Clock reset. Come back with the tax returns.
Another self-employed client was quoted a borrowing figure less than half her real capacity by one bank over the phone — before anyone had even looked at her financials properly.
None of this means don’t start the business. (Please start the business — some of the best home businesses in the country are run by mums between school pick-ups.) It means sequence it:
- Buying and going self-employed in the same couple of years? Consider buying first, while the payslip still exists — a payslip today can be worth more to a bank than a thriving ABN that’s eight months old.
- Already on the ABN? The magic milestone is usually your first (or second) full year’s tax return. Sometimes “we can’t buy” is actually “we can buy in August, after lodgement.” A date on the calendar beats giving up.
- Restructuring — sole trader to company, adding your partner to the business? Check the lending impact first. Restructures can reset the clock all over again.
The same logic applies if you’re weighing up studying versus returning to work: the shape of your income (permanent, casual, ABN, student) changes how banks read it, sometimes more than the amount does.
The single mum, the daycare wage, and the ex
Now for the story that stops people mid-scroll.
Melinda (name changed) had spent years working at a coal mine. After her separation, she retrained into childcare — earning around $50,000 a year — and wanted to buy her ex out of the family home so the kids didn’t have to move schools.
On paper? A newly single mum on a modest wage trying to take on a mortgage alone, mid cost-of-living crunch. The kind of situation where most people don’t even make the phone call.
But separation buyouts have their own mechanics. The equity already sitting in the home does a lot of the heavy lifting, transfers between separating partners are treated differently to normal purchases (in Queensland there can even be duty exemptions on the transfer — worth checking current rules), and child support can count as income. It’s genuinely solvable far more often than mums assume.
One hard-won lesson, though: banks are fussy about how child support is documented. A private arrangement with your ex — even one he’s paid like clockwork for years — often won’t be accepted. Lenders generally want a formal Child Support Agency assessment or court orders, plus about three months of bank statements showing the money actually arriving.
We’ve seen a mum with six figures in savings knocked back purely because her child support agreement was private rather than registered.
Maddening? Absolutely. Fixable in advance? Also absolutely — but only if someone tells you before you apply.
Casual shifts and the six-month rule
Heaps of us ease back into work with casual hours once the kids hit school — and then get blindsided by a rule nobody mentions at the school gate: many banks won’t count casual income until you’ve been in the role about six months.
Not because they doubt you. It’s just policy — they want the pattern established. So a mum three months into a casual job gets told her income “doesn’t exist yet,” while her friend in a permanent part-time role from day one sails through.
Two genuinely useful things fall out of that:
- Job-hunting with a house purchase in mind? A permanent part-time offer can beat a higher-paid casual one for borrowing purposes. We’ve seen a lower hourly rate with “permanent” on the contract assess better than more money on a casual basis. Worth remembering when you’re weighing offers after a career change.
- Already casual? The fix might literally be a date on the calendar. Some lenders bend the rule, and hitting six months changes everything — so the plan becomes “buy in May,” not “can’t buy.”
The deposit is smaller than you think (and family help counts)
Quick myth-check on the famous 20% while we’re here:
- Low-deposit schemes exist. Government guarantee schemes can let eligible buyers purchase with around a 5% deposit and no lenders mortgage insurance — and there’s a version for eligible single parents with dependants that can go as low as around 2%. Income limits, price caps and eligibility rules apply and change, and a participating lender has to confirm you qualify — but that 2% pathway has put keys in single mums’ hands years earlier than “save 20%” ever would.
- Gifted money counts — with one magic sentence. If your parents want to help, banks generally accept it, but they’ll want a signed letter confirming the money is a gift that doesn’t have to be repaid. Miss that sentence and the “help” can be assessed as a debt. One page of paper, done properly, is the whole trick.
- Grants and duty concessions stack. First home owner grants and transfer duty concessions (Queensland’s are pretty generous for first home buyers at the moment — check the current thresholds) can shave five figures off what you need saved.
The bit nobody tells you: the answer changes with the lender
If there’s one thread running through every story above, it’s this: families rarely get declined because of their situation — they get declined because their situation was put in front of the wrong lender.
FTB counted or not. Child support paperwork. Casual income at three months versus six. The ABN clock. Parental leave letters. Which scheme, which price cap. These are all policy questions, and policies differ wildly between banks — which is exactly why sitting down with a Brisbane mortgage broker before you assume anything can completely change the picture. A broker’s whole job is knowing which lender’s rulebook your family fits — and it’s generally free to you, because brokers are typically paid by the lender (always ask yours to confirm how they’re paid).
The mums in these stories didn’t have secret money or perfect circumstances. They had someone look at their actual situation — the FTB, the leave letter, the casual hours, the ABN, the child support paperwork — and match it to the right rulebook.
Before tonight’s 11pm realestate.com scroll
A gentle starting checklist:
- Add up your real assessable income — wages, FTB, registered child support, your partner’s income, established business income. It’s probably more than you think.
- Deal with the quiet borrowing killers — unused credit cards are assessed at their full limit even at zero balance. Closing a forgotten $5,000 card can meaningfully lift what you can borrow.
- On leave, going casual, or going out on your own? Sort the paperwork strategy before applying — the employer letter, the six-month date, the tax return timing, the CSA registration.
- Check what support you may be eligible for — grants, duty concessions and low-deposit schemes, on current rules, before you rule yourself out.
- Then talk to someone whose job is the rulebooks. Fifteen minutes of “here’s my actual chaos” beats months of guessing.
You might be closer than you think. Plenty of mums who were certain they’d be laughed out of the bank are reading this from the kitchen bench of a house with their name on the title.
Have your say!